Making your customers’ shortlist relies on reviewing these factors. For instance, are you using high-engagement content formats; do you have enough content; are you meeting buyers where they’re conducting research, with the right content, at the right time?

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Source: Enterprise Strategy Group Research Report, Security Services Edge (SSE) Leads the Way to SASE, November 2023.

Modern enterprise complexity is challenging cybersecurity programs. One of the biggest reasons is the broadening distribution of applications and employees away from traditional corporate locations, which is fueling complexity and creating networking and security challenges. Secure access service edge (SASE) technology can help address these issues, but adoption paths can widely vary. Indeed, the breadth of SASE and organizational considerations that must be accounted for when converging networking and security lead to a variety of starting points.

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Source: Enterprise Strategy Group Research Report, The State of Infrastructure Modernization Across the Distributed Cloud, November 2023.

The need to accelerate IT operations is perhaps more urgent than ever, as business and other organizational leaders look directly to IT to enable fast business decision-making. The good news is that technology quivers are brimming with tools to support operations acceleration, enabling organizations to speed both insights and outcomes as well as create an effective hybrid cloud ecosystem that is seamless and secure. Infrastructure modernization is evolving quickly, but bumps remain on the road toward cloud-like IT efficiency on premises and effective integration with public cloud infrastructure services.

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Source: Enterprise Strategy Group Research Report, Cloud Data Protection Strategies at a Crossroads, August 2023.

The broad adoption of public cloud services and containers as sources and repositories of business-critical data puts the onus on data owners to deliver on data protection SLAs for cloud-resident and container-based applications and data. Users are confused about the data protection levels that public cloud and Kubernetes environments deliver and about the changing protection options (DIY in the cloud, cloud-native third-party solutions, hyperscalers’ built-in features, as-a-service, etc.). As vendors and the cloud ecosystem evolve and add as-a-service consumption options, end-users are making incorrect comparisons and assumptions as well as failing to select the key data protection capabilities they need to maximize their cloud technology investments. This confusion leads to lasting challenges, and the market is now at a crossroads.

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Organizations want to get as much done as quickly and cheaply as possible, but rushing initiatives like digital transformation projects may have a hidden cost. Sometimes technology decisions are accelerated, and short-term savings on the cloud, infrastructure, software, and services are leveraged to get the project launched quickly. But this often means that a tradeoff occurs between the long-term alignment to organizational goals and short-term reaction to current pressures.

Changes made in the name of expediency often result in business requirement oversights, software development shortcuts, and customer experience shortfalls. This leads to Technical Debt, creating longer-term technical challenges as an unintended consequence of short-term thinking. Similar to financial debt, we often borrow to accelerate what we can’t afford and leverage financing to acquire assets sooner versus later. But borrowed money comes at a cost, requiring you to pay interest on the borrowed funds. Over time, unpaid interest can accrue, compounding to a rather large sum if you are not careful, and eventually you must repay the principal. This same concept impacts the effectiveness of technology when decisions are made with a rush to market and short-term considerations, taking priority over long-term alignment between technology and business goals.

ESG analysts analyzed the impact of technical debt and quantified the impact of making decisions that can accrue technical debt. ESG believes that organizations that choose to prioritize “Rush over Rightness” in technology investments realize higher costs for refactoring, higher total cost of ownership (TCO), an impact on productivity and especially innovation, as well as incurring significant limitations in agility, security, maximized revenue, and customer satisfaction.

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Source: Enterprise Strategy Group Research Report, A Network Perspective on SASE and SD-WAN, November 2023.

The level of interest in secure access service edge (SASE) architectures has exploded recently as organizations struggle to use traditional, on-premises-based network and security solutions to support distributed, cloud-centric enterprise environments. While this has been an increasing challenge over the last few years, the pandemic and resulting spike in newly remote workers pushed many organizations to a tipping point when it comes to both security and network traffic. Additionally, the broad applicability of SASE leads to some confusion on where to begin and which technologies are required, exacerbated by legacy organizational dynamics. While Enterprise Strategy Group has seen SASE elevated to a CIO/CISO-led initiative in some cases, inconsistencies remain for many organizations in day-to-day collaboration across network and security teams.

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To learn more about these trends, download the free infographic, The Life and Times of Cybersecurity Professionals Volume VI.

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To learn more about these trends, download the free infographic, A Network Perspective on SASE and SD-WAN.

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Recently, I was able to get a behind-the-scenes tour of the newly renovated Gillette Stadium, home of the New England Patriots and New England Revolution, to better understand how they are improving in-person experiences. If you are not aware, Gillette Stadium recently underwent a significant renovation in its north end zone to provide additional hospitality services, a massive outdoor screen, and modernize its video network to support broadcast TV, security and safety, and eventually deliver video content to the screens distributed throughout the stadium. Regardless of where you are, you never miss a play.

For those attending the game/event, it is impossible to miss the massive outdoor screen in the north end zone. This 22,000-square-foot screen (for context, that is almost half an acre) is the largest curved outdoor HD video board in the U.S. And in case you are wondering, no, this will not fit in your living room. Being over five times larger than the video board it replaced, it provides a great view of the action taking place on the field for almost the entire stadium. And of course, the new 22-story lighthouse with an observation deck behind the board is also quite distinctive.

While these additions have a dramatic visual impact, it is really what is going on behind the scenes that provides the more differentiated experience. A big part of this renovation was creating an in-house video production studio for the stadium. So, while production trucks will still be required for uplinks, all the game video feeds now run through this production room. This allows the stadium to control the content going to the screens in the stadium and why those attending the game get to see replays (NFL, MLS) on the big screen before those at home do—if at all. To always ensure high availability, the stadium leverages redundant on-premises data centers and multiple redundant network connections on each side of the stadium. As a side note, the data center environment we toured was as impressive as the screen—not a wire out of place—and everything was labelled according to the standards of the Kraft Group (owners of the Patriots and Revolution). To ensure all the video feeds can be collected from the cameras, then viewed in the production room, and delivered to broadcasters and the video screens, Gillette Stadium turned to Cisco Systems network technology for a wired solution that was designed and implemented by the Acadia Technology Group. The deployment also included the infrastructure to support the main press conference room as well as several breakout Cisco WebEx interview rooms.

In addition to game/event day, Gillette Stadium also created an operations control room to improve operational efficiencies. Again, aided by dozens of video panels, this main operations control room tracks weather, real-time automobile traffic, and foot traffic in and around the stadium. Aided by AI technology that can quickly alert this team, comprised of Gillette Stadium staff, local, state, or federal officials, of any issues that need to be addressed. For example, the AI-enabled scene analytics software could detect something as simple as a full trash can and alert maintenance to empty it or monitor inventory levels in self-checkout kiosks so staffers can ensure products are always available, to detecting a fan trying to scale a fence to an unauthorized area, which would alert security teams to act. Ultimately, this enables Gillette Stadium staff to provide the best possible and safest experience on game day or event.  

As an aside, it is worth noting that Micheal Israel, the Kraft Group CIO who led the tour, is also in charge of the other Kraft businesses and that the innovative technology deployed at the stadium often gets implemented at the other Kraft Group locations to deliver greater operational efficiencies and safety. The aforementioned AI-enabled scene analytics capability and Cisco networks are just a few of the technologies that have been implemented, and they have led to improved processes and productivity at the Kraft Group recycling plants.  

Why does all this matter? It demonstrates the value that innovative technology can have in improving not just a game day or concert experience but also any business process. Stadiums such as Gillette, SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles, Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas, and others continue to use technology to deliver a differentiated and safe game day/concert experience. Video, Wi-Fi, and 5G networks all play a role in enabling these massive stadium environments to deliver an enhanced experience. It’s great to see Gillette Stadium (and the Kraft Group) continue to innovate and share their experiences with other stadiums to raise the bar for all stadium events. More importantly, businesses outside of sports and entertainment can learn from these technology deployments and leverage them to improve their own process, product, or ensure a safe and productive work environment—or provide a differentiated experience to their employees!

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Source: Enterprise Strategy Group Research Report, Customer Experience Strategies and Technology Frameworks, June 2023.

Customer experience is the sum of a customer’s digital interactions with a company throughout the customer lifecycle, from early online research of a product or service to active use and repeat business such as subscriptions. Most customer experience programs include the measurement of customer satisfaction and sentiment analysis. These processes aggregate and analyze customers’ perceptions and feelings resulting from interactions with a brand’s products and services, most often through short surveys collected throughout an engagement. Customer loyalty and retention are the desired results from the thoughtful execution and continuous improvement of CX.

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To learn more about these trends, download the free infographic, The State of Infrastructure Modernization Across the Distributed Cloud.

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